Timbuktu: A City for the Ages

Mali's fabled desert city of Timbuktu endured 10 months of rule by militias backed by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb before French-led forces surrounded the city on Monday.

Updated Jan. 29, 2013 10:47 a.m. ET

fullscreen

This depiction of the African city was drawn by Renè-Auguste Caillie, who claimed to be the first European to visit the desert city of Timbuktu, and return.
Continents History/Everett Collection…

Timbuktu's Sankore Mosque was built in the 14th century and can be seen rising about the mud brick rooftops in the north part of the city in this undated photograph; today, the mosque is included in Unesco's 'List of World Heritage in Danger.'
Mary Evans / Grenville Collins Postcard Collection…

The ruins of a Timbuktu mosque, in an undated photo. The city's three biggest mosques, according to Unesco, 'are exceptional examples of earthen architecture and of traditional maintenance techniques, which continue to the present time.'
Superstock/Everett Collection…

A postcard from Timbuktu in the 1880s shows a house in which Austrian explorer Oskar Lenz was living in 1880.
Mary Evans/Grenville Collins Postcard Collection/Everett Collection…

A market in Timbuktu in the 1930s.
AFP/Getty Images…

A family sailing on the Niger River in Timbuktu in 1946, when the city was part of the colony known as French Sudan.
AFP/Getty Images…

Tuareg clansmen helped Sheikh Ahmedou ag Abdallah, right, carry the 'stone of abundance' in Koygma, a camp west of Timbuktu in 1997. 'This proves our ancestors were here,' Ahmedou said about the rock, which bore markings like the cattle brand used by his clan.
Jerome Daley/Associated Press…

A lone Tuareg man stood on a dune in the desert near Timbuktu in 2005.
Francois Xavier Marit/AFP/Getty Images…

Adobe buildings line the streets of Timbuktu, in this undated photo.
AISA/Everett Collection…

According to Unesco, the mosque of Djingareyber, shown here, was constructed by Sultan Kankan Moussa after he returned from a pilgrimage in Mecca in 1325. It was enlarged and rebuilt in the late 1570s, and its central minaret is one of the most visible landmarks of the city.
AISA/Everett Collection…

People sat on Timbuktu's stone streets in January 2006.
Habibou Kouyate/AFP/Getty Images…

Alfa Telfi, age 72 when this photo was taken in 2004, read crumbling ancient Islamic manuscripts in his mud-walled house in Timbuktu.
Ben Curtis/Associated Press…

Residents worked to restore the Djingareyber Mosque in 2006.
Issouf Sanogo/AFP/Getty Images…

Men worked near one of the city's mosques in May 2012.
Associated Press…

A television camera captured this image of a pickup truck carrying Islamist fighters in the streets of Timbuktu in April 2012, when the militants first occupied the city.
AFP/Getty Images…

In July 2012, a video still showed militants destroying an ancient shrine in the city. In a campaign to impose a harsh form of Shariah law, militants banned music, imposed amputations as punishment for theft and demolished medieval shrines deemed un-Islamic.
AFP/Getty Images…